<div dir="ltr">I think this depends on the person. My sister has been correcting & helping my parents correct their "chin-glish" for the past 20 years or so and they've never lost their ability to speak Chinese, but outsiders can now actually understand their english much better. They still have an accent, but at least americans can understand what my parents are trying to say. Sometimes you get into the habit of pronouncing words in a certain way and it's hard to break out of the habit until you get someone to correct you.<div>
<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 8:55 AM, hep <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dis@gruntle.org" target="_blank">dis@gruntle.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Actually you can lose abilities with your native language, especially if language retraining takes place at a young age. I grew up a native spanish speaker, and was forced into "speech classes" for more than 5 years to lose my native accent. To this day I can no longer speak spanish with as much physical fluidity as before I lost my accent, and because of the fact that letters are pronounced different from english to spanish, i often now have to think about how to speak spanish so i don't end up mispronouncing words. Particularly in hispanic communities, accent erasure is considered to be colonial and yet another form of white dominance in america to do with the racialization of language (despite the fact that many hispanic and latino people have been here since this WAS mexico). I cannot speak for other cultures, but I know that in many latino and hispanic cultures accent erasure is now frowned upon as disconnecting more of the threads to one's native culture in favor of the white american dominant culture (particularly those hispanics like myself who are many generations american, going back to the 1700s.) and there is a movement to stop the practice of having latino native spanish speakers work on reducing or losing their accent.<div>

<br></div><div>This is something to keep in mind especially with the current situation re: gentrifying natives out of the mission, and the current hostility to hispanic immigrants in this country. This is also part of the current identity and racism in tech issue that is going on in the Valley, particularly relating to Paul Graham's xenophobic comments about CEOs with accents:</div>

</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb2625587" target="_blank">http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb2625587</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>This is something we all need to think about, especially in this day of interconnected internet gossip and communities organizing online against things they feel threatens their culture. It would suck to show up on Valleywag as "NOISEBRIDGE TELLS FOREIGN SPEAKERS TO LEARN ENGLISH" and considering the climate of the valley and the mission at this time that is certainly something that could happen.</div>

<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><p dir="ltr">Haha, we can't lose it most of the time so no problem for that (at least I know I'm stuck with mine) but it's sometimes really tiring to not even be understood because of our pronunciation...<br>

<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Understanding has to be important, but I just want to chime in that I like hearing foreign speaker's accents. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">

<p dir="ltr">I would like to promote the workshop by various "social" websites including <a href="http://meetup.com" target="_blank">meetup.com</a> and any other way that will help me build the core group.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Is there anything I should know about organizing events at Noisebridge, outside of what is included here: <a href="https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Hosting_an_Event" target="_blank">https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Hosting_an_Event</a> ? Do you have any tips on how to book the classroom for this?</p>